Rifqa Bary, the teenage girl
who fled to Florida from her Ohio home in fear for her life after her
Muslim parents discovered her conversion to Christianity, has just
turned eighteen. Her life is now hers, and her Florida and Ohio lawyers
have embarked upon an unseemly victory dance to spin their appalling and
failed legal strategy. I have stood silently by watching this, but now
they are spinning their failure into a fundraising circus and smearing
me and my colleagues, and that cannot stand.

Now
that Rifqa has turned eighteen, one of her lawyers, Kort Gatterdam, has
done an interview with Tom Trento, an activist with the Florida
Security Council. Trento has in turn sent around an e-mail raising funds
on the name of Rifqa Bary and excoriating "so many friendly 'arm-chair'
lawyers and bloggers who so viciously attacked their own side." By
"arm-chair lawyers," Trento means my associate, the attorney John Jay,
and by bloggers, he means me. Pot, meet kettle.

If I had to sum the interview in four words, they'd be mighta, cudda, wudda, and shudda. Wish I hadda.

The
failed legal strategy of Rifqa's Florida attorney John Stemberger and
his Ohio associate Gatterdam refused to address the issue of Rifqa's
death threat, or the issues of Islamic apostasy and honor killing -- the
only things that gave credibility to Rifqa's claim that her father had
threatened to kill her. Their strategy also enabled the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic supremacists to
manipulate the legal process and deny Rifqa her civil rights, isolating
her from her closest friends.

Rifqa
has now turned eighteen, and her immigration status is still in doubt.
Gatterdam admits that Rifqa "won't make it" if she is sent back to Sri
Lanka, as she could be easily killed there because of her apostasy, but
nonetheless, Stemberger and Gatterdam did not make it part of their
strategy to try to gain asylum for Rifqa on that basis. Gatterdam even
acknowledges that "we didn't know what we were talking about." Got that?

An asylum case based on the death penalty for apostasy should have been Stemberger's opening shot, not a hindsight call.

Instead,
their strategy was to obtain Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS)
for Rifqa, and only that. SIJS gives a minor the ability to stay in the
U.S. separate from his or her family's immigration problem. In that
case, the immigration status would not be based upon any contention that
the immigrant would be in any kind of danger back home -- as Rifqa
clearly would be. But Rifqa's crack legal team couldn't even secure this
status for her.

Now
her lawyers are crowing that she didn't have to go home to her parents,
but she never would have had to anyway. No child of Rifqa's age at the
time she fled from her home -- seventeen -- would have been returned to
her home if she refused to go. Whether the threat described by the child
has been substantiated or not, a child will not be returned to a home
if the child refuses. Period.

So
why did Stemberger and Gatterdam continue to pursue this nonsensical
legal approach? Rifqa's entire legal strategy hinged on obtaining SIJS
for her. This was the objective, the end run. If they could keep Rifqa
out of her dangerous home environment and secure immigration status,
then it didn't matter how they did it, as long as the goal was achieved.
So they tried to play ball with the Barys' CAIR lawyers and counted on
cooperation from them.

They
did not understand the nature of the threat and the enemy Rifqa faced.
They were playing by a set of rules inapplicable to the challenge they
faced. By pretending that Sharia was not the 800-pound gorilla in the
room, they were out-strategized -- and now, Rifqa is eighteen and has no
legal basis to be in the United States. At one point in the video,
Trento notes the irreconcilability of the Islamic faith of the Barys and
Rifqa's Christianity and asks Gatterdam, "Do you think that weighed in
the fact that the parents would not allow this special immigration
status for Rifqa?"

Attorney
John Jay, who spent upwards of twenty years in the courtroom, three in
juvenile court, observes that "it is not for the parents, who were,
after all, Rifqa's adversaries, to agree to any special immigration
status. That special immigration status for Rifqa was for her lawyers to
secure for her, regardless of parental opposition."

Could
Rifqa's lawyers have been more wrongheaded and clueless? They should
have applied for apostasy asylum months and months ago.

But
now they're singing a different tune. Even while taking shots at
"bloggers" who supposedly "viciously attacked their own side,"
Gatterdam, in part I of Trento's video, at the seven-minute mark, citesexclusive material from AtlasShrugs.com
concerning Mohamed Bary's immigration documentation. It proved that
Bary perjured himself repeatedly when applying for immigration status
under two separate and distinct applications. Gatterdam goes on to say
that because of my exclusive documentation, Bary should be investigated and perhaps prosecuted by immigration authorities (he doesn't name me as the source, of course).

What
is really rich is that at 13:04, when questioned about being criticized
by bloggers, Gatterdam snarks, "Consider the source -- if the source is
not a credible one, and most of the people writing those things are not
credible." But not five minutes before that, he was citing my work as
evidence credible enough to be introduced into a court of law.

It
was symbolic of their overall confusion. Says Jay, "They have only
these after-the-fact assertions" about how Rifqa's case should best have
been conducted. Jay told me this about Rifqa's lawyers: "And like the
Barys' perjury in immigration court, they learned what they learned
mostly from you and other bloggers trying to help."

Stemberger
and Gatterdam are ignorant of Islamic supremacism, CAIR tactics, and
the threat doctrine. This makes them far less credible than they're
trying to appear to be -- as is evidenced by their failure to secure
Rifqa's immigration status. I have studied this subject matter for
years. Robert Spencer is one of the world's leading scholars on Islam,
and John, who practiced law for 25 years -- most of it as a felony level
defender to include a five- or six-year stint as a juvenile court
prosecutor and another two or three years working almost exclusively in
juvenile dependency court -- observed that. Credible, indeed.

Comments

Rifqa Bary, the teenage girl
who fled to Florida from her Ohio home in fear for her life after her
Muslim parents discovered her conversion to Christianity, has just
turned eighteen. Her life is now hers, and her Florida and Ohio lawyers
have embarked upon an unseemly victory dance to spin their appalling and
failed legal strategy. I have stood silently by watching this, but now
they are spinning their failure into a fundraising circus and smearing
me and my colleagues, and that cannot stand.

Now
that Rifqa has turned eighteen, one of her lawyers, Kort Gatterdam, has
done an interview with Tom Trento, an activist with the Florida
Security Council. Trento has in turn sent around an e-mail raising funds
on the name of Rifqa Bary and excoriating "so many friendly 'arm-chair'
lawyers and bloggers who so viciously attacked their own side." By
"arm-chair lawyers," Trento means my associate, the attorney John Jay,
and by bloggers, he means me. Pot, meet kettle.

If I had to sum the interview in four words, they'd be mighta, cudda, wudda, and shudda. Wish I hadda.

The
failed legal strategy of Rifqa's Florida attorney John Stemberger and
his Ohio associate Gatterdam refused to address the issue of Rifqa's
death threat, or the issues of Islamic apostasy and honor killing -- the
only things that gave credibility to Rifqa's claim that her father had
threatened to kill her. Their strategy also enabled the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic supremacists to
manipulate the legal process and deny Rifqa her civil rights, isolating
her from her closest friends.

Rifqa
has now turned eighteen, and her immigration status is still in doubt.
Gatterdam admits that Rifqa "won't make it" if she is sent back to Sri
Lanka, as she could be easily killed there because of her apostasy, but
nonetheless, Stemberger and Gatterdam did not make it part of their
strategy to try to gain asylum for Rifqa on that basis. Gatterdam even
acknowledges that "we didn't know what we were talking about." Got that?

An asylum case based on the death penalty for apostasy should have been Stemberger's opening shot, not a hindsight call.

Instead,
their strategy was to obtain Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS)
for Rifqa, and only that. SIJS gives a minor the ability to stay in the
U.S. separate from his or her family's immigration problem. In that
case, the immigration status would not be based upon any contention that
the immigrant would be in any kind of danger back home -- as Rifqa
clearly would be. But Rifqa's crack legal team couldn't even secure this
status for her.

Now
her lawyers are crowing that she didn't have to go home to her parents,
but she never would have had to anyway. No child of Rifqa's age at the
time she fled from her home -- seventeen -- would have been returned to
her home if she refused to go. Whether the threat described by the child
has been substantiated or not, a child will not be returned to a home
if the child refuses. Period.

So
why did Stemberger and Gatterdam continue to pursue this nonsensical
legal approach? Rifqa's entire legal strategy hinged on obtaining SIJS
for her. This was the objective, the end run. If they could keep Rifqa
out of her dangerous home environment and secure immigration status,
then it didn't matter how they did it, as long as the goal was achieved.
So they tried to play ball with the Barys' CAIR lawyers and counted on
cooperation from them.

They
did not understand the nature of the threat and the enemy Rifqa faced.
They were playing by a set of rules inapplicable to the challenge they
faced. By pretending that Sharia was not the 800-pound gorilla in the
room, they were out-strategized -- and now, Rifqa is eighteen and has no
legal basis to be in the United States. At one point in the video,
Trento notes the irreconcilability of the Islamic faith of the Barys and
Rifqa's Christianity and asks Gatterdam, "Do you think that weighed in
the fact that the parents would not allow this special immigration
status for Rifqa?"

Attorney
John Jay, who spent upwards of twenty years in the courtroom, three in
juvenile court, observes that "it is not for the parents, who were,
after all, Rifqa's adversaries, to agree to any special immigration
status. That special immigration status for Rifqa was for her lawyers to
secure for her, regardless of parental opposition."

Could
Rifqa's lawyers have been more wrongheaded and clueless? They should
have applied for apostasy asylum months and months ago.

But
now they're singing a different tune. Even while taking shots at
"bloggers" who supposedly "viciously attacked their own side,"
Gatterdam, in part I of Trento's video, at the seven-minute mark, citesexclusive material from AtlasShrugs.com
concerning Mohamed Bary's immigration documentation. It proved that
Bary perjured himself repeatedly when applying for immigration status
under two separate and distinct applications. Gatterdam goes on to say
that because of my exclusive documentation, Bary should be investigated and perhaps prosecuted by immigration authorities (he doesn't name me as the source, of course).

What
is really rich is that at 13:04, when questioned about being criticized
by bloggers, Gatterdam snarks, "Consider the source -- if the source is
not a credible one, and most of the people writing those things are not
credible." But not five minutes before that, he was citing my work as
evidence credible enough to be introduced into a court of law.

It
was symbolic of their overall confusion. Says Jay, "They have only
these after-the-fact assertions" about how Rifqa's case should best have
been conducted. Jay told me this about Rifqa's lawyers: "And like the
Barys' perjury in immigration court, they learned what they learned
mostly from you and other bloggers trying to help."

Stemberger
and Gatterdam are ignorant of Islamic supremacism, CAIR tactics, and
the threat doctrine. This makes them far less credible than they're
trying to appear to be -- as is evidenced by their failure to secure
Rifqa's immigration status. I have studied this subject matter for
years. Robert Spencer is one of the world's leading scholars on Islam,
and John, who practiced law for 25 years -- most of it as a felony level
defender to include a five- or six-year stint as a juvenile court
prosecutor and another two or three years working almost exclusively in
juvenile dependency court -- observed that. Credible, indeed.